The authors examined intergenerational family predictors of the Black–White achievement gap among 4,406 adolescents from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. An intergenerational model of the process by which family factors contribute to the achievement gap was also tested. The results showed that the ethnic gaps in socioeconomic status (SES) and achievement had significantly reduced over the past few generations. Moreover, measures of grandparent SES, mothers' achievement, parent SES, and a comprehensive set of reliable parenting practices explained all of the ethnic differences in achievement scores. Parenting practices such as creating a school-oriented home environment, allowing adolescents to make decisions, and not burdening them with too many chores had particularly important effects on the achievement gap. The authors conclude that adjusting for these differences would eliminate the ethnic achievement gap.

Longitudinal data from the children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) were used to
assess how well measures of short-term and working memory and attention in early childhood predicted
longitudinal growth trajectories in mathematics and reading comprehension. Analyses also examined
whether changes in memory and attention were more strongly predictive of changes in academic skills
in early childhood than in later childhood. All predictors were significantly associated with academic
achievement and years of schooling attained, although the latter was at least partially mediated by
predictors' effect on academic achievement in adolescence. The relationship of working memory and
attention with academic outcomes was also found to be strong and positive in early childhood but
nonsignificant or small and negative in later years. The study results provide support for a "fade-out"
hypothesis, which suggests that underlying cognitive capacities predict learning in the early elementary
grades, but the relationship fades by late elementary school. These findings suggest that whereas efforts
to develop attention and memory may improve academic achievement in the early grades, in the later
grades interventions that focus directly on subject matter learning are more likely to improve
achievement.